I have been taking a break from long, grueling, HARD games beacuse I’m just done with them right now. Instead, I’m playing a bunch of casual games and a few indie games to cleanse my palate. One thing I have always appreciated about casual games (and now indie games) is that they always/usually (respectively) have demos. I really appreciate it because it’s hard to know what some games are like from just the description.
I think every game should have a demo, honestly. There was a discussion in the RKG Discord about difficulties mode (not the point of this post, so let’s move on past it for now), and someone said she liked it when games had demos so she could see what a game was like before buying it. I agreed, and I use Game Pass to demo games I might want to play. (Note to self: drop Game Pass.) I usually end up playing the game on Game Pass, but I have bought several indie games on Steam after playing it on Game Pass because I wanted to support the devs.
One of the games I demoed a few months ago (I think it was from the Wholesome Direct, but I can’t say for sure) was a very fun and addictive little game called Is This Seat Taken? by Poti Poti Studio, which is located in Brussels, Belgium and Barcelona Spain. Which, probably not surprisingly, are two of the destinations in the game.
It’s a very simple game and immediately pleasing to my eyes. All the characters are shapes, and you have to seat them according to their preferences. Each had one to three preferences, and they ranged from ‘I want to stand’ (at, say, a game) to ‘I don’t like smells’. The demo was the whole first city, and maybe an hour? Or a bit longer.
The first level was a bus, and it was fairly simple. The preferences made things harder and harder as the levels progressed, and there was a real sense of satisfaction in figuring out how to seat everyone properly. There was one I had to look up, but it was because the devs didn’t explain a few very important things.
In certain levels, there are things that can be moved. Like in the diner, you can move the food and drinks to different countertop squares or tables. Unless I missed it, there was nothing that said this, and I spent a frustrating amount of time trying to work out one of the puzzles.
In other levels, some people wanted to stand. There was no explanation as to how to allow people to stand. I futzed around for a bit, and then I figured out that if there was a dotted box in front of the seat and the seat was up (neither was very obvious), that meant someone could stand there. Which, fine. Until I reached, ok. Look. Each city has five levels (and a sixth one you can unlock if you do all the others perfectly. I think. I only moved on when I did a level perfectly). Each level has five…stages, I guess?